Top News StoriesEvaluating SharePoint for Larger Enterprises (Intelligent Enterprise)I recently offered a session at the J. Boye Philadelphia 09 conference. Speaking in the SharePoint track, I was able to interact with a number of the attendees, getting great insight into SharePoint implementations across very different businesses. Folks from companies like Wyeth, WestJet, and Ikea were either implementing SharePoint or in the early stages of planning for an implementation.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 Beta Drops (Campus Technology)The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 bits are available to MSDN subscribers today. A public beta is scheduled for release Wednesday. "We have more work to do in terms of finishing up the feature work for some of the scenarios and getting to the right levels of quality and performance, but we have made enough progress that we wanted to start getting your feedback." said S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft's senior vice president of the Developer Division, in his blog earlier today.

HP, Microsoft Forge $180 Million UC Alliance (Channel Web)Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Microsoft have unveiled a four-year, $180 million global initiative to work together to deliver integrated unified communications (UC) and collaboration solutions. Unveiled Tuesday at Interop Las Vegas 2009, the two powerhouses said the deal is an extension of their 20-plus-year Frontline Partnership, through which the two companies collaborate for enterprise offerings.

Leaked Office 2010 Technical Preview Infected Just as Windows 7 RC (Softpedia)Microsoft has warned testers that have or are looking to jump the gun and grab the bits for Office 2010 Technology Preview before they are released through the company's official channels that the leaked CTP builds come with an inherent threat of getting infected with malicious code. There are similarities between the development processes of Windows 7 and that of Office 2010, formerly codenamed Office 14, in more aspects than one. Both of Microsoft's cash cows have been leaked and offered for download through illegal third-party sources, including torrent trackers. And both Windows 7 and Office 2010 are used by malware authors as incentives to spread and get users infected with malicious code.

Three Ways to Install Windows 7 on a Netbook (PC Advisor)You can download the Windows 7 Release Candidate free of charge from Microsoft and use it for nearly a year - but what if you want to put it on a netbook? The traditional method of installing the OS starts with burning the downloaded ISO file to a DVD, which you then pop into your desktop or laptop. That's fine if you have a desktop or laptop, but netbooks are notoriously devoid of optical drives.

Cloud Brings New Tech to SMBs, Along with Pitfalls (ZDNet)For small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with budget constraints and limited skills, cloud-based services provide a cost-effective means to access new technology that would otherwise be unattainable. But, Chris Morris, director of Asia-Pacific services at IDC, noted that SMBs should look at the feasibility of what is being offered and whether this suits their business needs.

Cisco Pushes Framework for Mobile Computing (eWeek)The great thing about mobile computing is that it significantly boosts mobility. The bad thing about mobility is that it will drive you mad trying to support it. The thing that drives enterprise customers crazy about mobility is the general lack of standards. The end result is a dizzying array of proprietary services and products that all require special attention and unique application development environments if you want to develop a custom application.

EMC World: Companies that Adopt New Tools Still Need to Manage the Data (ZDNet)How or why is your information important? Information in a business setting might include e-mails that need to be retained and archived for regulatory purposes. Or it might be the collaborative documents that employees have been working on for a product launch. At EMC World in Orlando this week, there’s a lot of talk about virtual data centers and cloud infrastructure. But in a keynote speech this morning, Mark Lewis, president of the content management and archiving division, shifted his discussion to another critical matter: information management.

Around the BlogosphereEnter to Win a Free Pass to the SharePoint Conference 2009! (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)Do you think of yourself as someone with a flair for web design? How would you like a free pass to the SharePoint conference & ultimate bragging rights with your friends? Here is what you need to do. Dream up what you think the homepage of the SharePoint conference should look and feel like. Don’t worry about the content; we are most interested in the look and feel, colors & layout. Will you go wild or will you go conservative? You decide! The competition is open now & ends on June 19, 2009.

Leaked Build and Staying Safe (The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog)I wanted to post quickly to acknowledge the information that you have seen today around bits of Office 2010 being leaked. While all of us here are happy to see the incredible excitement and engagement (and are absolutely chomping at the bit to reach the July milestone) we aren’t quite ready to release the technical preview bits. I would encourage all of you to wait until the official bits are available to ensure the best possible experience and not miss out on anything we may include.

Use Custom Lists for More Effective Workflow Auditing (End User SharePoint)SharePoint Designer workflow doesn’t give us a lot of visibility into what’s happening with our workflow solutions. And, the visibility that we do get is hampered by a relatively poor interface and 60 day time window. This 60 day window can be a major disappointment to new SharePoint Designer users because it’s not advertised by the tool itself. It’s not at all uncommon for someone to fire up SharePoint Designer, create a workflow solution that leverages the “Log To History List” action as shown in Figure 1:

Things that can Go Wrong with SharePoint Solution Deployments (Daniel Larson's Developer Blog)One of the cool things about working at NewsGator is that the software we write is insanely popular—a LOT of people use it. (Our customers are mainly Fortune 500 companies, but we have a lot of little customers too.) Since our software gets deployed to so many varied environments, we see a lot of different server configurations, and have learned to make no assumptions about SharePoint configuration. We’ve also seen a lot of things that can go wrong with deployments. Even though I’m not in our support organization, we’re all involved in support when we’re deploying at major customers and things go south. So from experience, here are a few things that can go wrong with server farms, and how they can be resolved. Just about all of these configuration errors can drastically effect the deployment of custom solutions on the platform. (Are you hiring a SharePoint administrator? Throw your farm into one of these mis-configurations and see if the interviewee can identify it!)

(7) Phase 4: Design and Build (Manage Projects on SharePoint)Note that as you start this phase, the focus is on the design and build for one (the current) iteration only, not for the entire workplace. It is relative easy to build solutions using SharePoint but it is essential that you build a solution that improves an existing process or introduces a new process that adds value to your customer. In the Design and Build phase, it is important to work with customer representatives that have been trained in the base SharePoint platform. You should design and build in a systematic set of steps, getting feedback from your customer at each step and modifying your design and development based on this feedback. This systematic approach will lead to a deliverable at the end of the iteration that adds real value to your customer in a much shorter timeframe.

Planning and Managing SharePoint Team Site Deployment (SharePoint Buzz)As Microsoft SharePoint gains traction globally as a content management system, project management tool and collaboration platform, the underlying technical considerations and planning can understandably take centre stage. But, as critical as the technical strategy is, what happens once a SharePoint project goes live is just as important. Widespread adoption and uptake in use of SharePoint and its related tools must be planned for and managed as effectively as the technological platform itself.

Around Bamboo NationHow do you Bamboo? (Overland, Pacific & Cutler, Inc.) (The Bamboo Team Blog)It's always gratifying to hear how our products are helping customers meet their everyday goals in the workplace. We spend a great deal of time developing, testing, and fine-tuning our products, but we never want to lose sight of our end goal - enabling you to improve your business performance through SharePoint web parts. With this in mind, we ask you "How do you Bamboo?" so that we may learn from your experience, and share how our products are having a real impact on real companies. This week: Igor Karon from Overland, Pacific & Cutler, Inc.

SharePoint Job Listings**SHAREPOINT ARCHITECTS (H/F)As a SharePoint Architect you will lead and participate in the architectural design, development, customization and integration tasks of enterprise solutions involving Portals, Enterprise Search, Enterprise Content Management, Business Intelligence and Business Process and Forms. The solutions you will design shall be based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and other .NET components.

SHAREPOINT DEVELOPERS (H/F)As a SharePoint Developer you will be involved in the implementation of projects using the Microsoft SharePoint platform at leading organisations. You will have the opportunity to work with the latest tools, attend training and work on technology leading projects.